Houkago no Pleiades (Wish Upon the Pleiades)

Subject: Houkago no Pleiades (Wish Upon the Pleiades) 15th June 2015, 8:29 pm

Anyone else watching this show? It kinda got a bad tag line, since it's a collaboration between studio Gainax and Subaru, the car company. I wasn't sure if it'd be my cup of tea, but after following it on blogs for a while I watched all 10 presently available episodes in a day and I loved it! I haven't found a mahou shoujo anime I liked in a while, and I don't know if it's all the space imagery, the cuteness, the humor, or the splash of romance, but this show just makes me happy when I watch it.

Story: Subaru is a junior high student that loves the stars. One day, after school, she meets aliens from Pleiades in outer space. The Pleiadesians said they summoned a helper from Earth to collect engine parts so that they could repair the interstellar immigrant ship that broke down in the Earth's orbit. However, for some reason they summoned one but ended up with five helpers! The five girls assigned to be "wizards" all are lacking something, and even when they try to combine their powers, they're always mismatched and failing. On top of it, a mysterious boy appears... can they manage to collect all the engine parts and repair the spaceship like this? In order to help a hapless alien, with the power of infinite possibilities due to immaturity as their weapon, Subaru and the other four fly around to gather parts while nurturing their friendship. This is a story of hope that traverses through space and time.

I'm not sure who approached who (Subaru to Gainax, or vice versa), but the main character, Subaru shares the same name as the car company and the girls' magic drive shafts have car-like front lights and make engine noises. Also, "Subaru" is the Japanese name of the Pleiades star cluster, and the company's logo features six stars modeled after the star cluster, which is also seen in the anime's title logo.

Beyond that there aren't any overt product placements. If anything, whenever I now see a Subaru commercial on TV I think of this anime instead. :bunnynarroweye

I've seen two episodes of this but I'm gonna wait until it finishes its run before I watch it.

I usually wait until a show is over or almost over before I take the plunge, because you never know if it will end in a train wreck or end ambiguously and Gainax especially, is well known for the latter. But for this one...I think I was intrigued enough by it that I'm willing to take the emotional risk? XD;;

So, being the fan girl that I am, after I finished watching HnP I started writing a sequel fanfic. And because my Muse felt that that alone wasn't enough, I also drew a cover and illustrations to accompany each chapter. >_>;;

Donno how many people would be interested in reading the story, but you can read it here, and I've posted the illustrations I've drawn below.